Alex Hoban

Back in 1820, Russian Tzar Nicholas I built a massive prison on the Baltic coast just outside of Tallinn, which was so good at making prisoners cower remorsefully before the might of the hegemon that it remained in commission right up until 2004, when Fac…

While you were sleeping, North Korea was causing a small earthquake on the Korean peninsula. After a gradual buildup over the past few weeks that's seen domestic media in the socialist state saturated with missile-themed iconography, and timed just a coup…

It's never nice when underage dictators point their nuclear arsenal at you willy-nilly, but try not to panic too much. I don't think North Korea is going to blow up America just yet, or that deep down Kim Jong Un even wants to.

Yesterday Kim Jong Un, now the world's youngest leader, broke the silent tradition of his reclusive father and made a New Year's speech to the people of North Korea, filling them in on his plans for a totally awesome 2013. It was the first time the count…

When the USSR finally collapsed in 1991, most of Eastern Europe's caviar-puking oligarchs got busy buying up all the expensively-built factories and refineries that sat abandoned across the old Soviet Union. Patrick Lion bought an old farm and built a the…

Back in 1820, hard Russian Tsar Nicholas I built a massive prison on the Baltic coast just outside of Tallinn, which was so good at making prisoners cower remorsefully before the might of the hegemon that it remained in commission right up until 2004.

The nice people from Zebra Music Festival invited me all the way out to Sichuan province to prove that fun exists in China and that it is definitely not a totalitarian communist state hell bent on stamping out every last bit of creativity in its quest for…

Just outside Beirut, in the town of Jounieh, stands one of the Middle East's foremost tourist attractions. An oasis of opulence and grandeur, Lebanon's 'Hall of Fame Wax Museum' provides a bolt-hole for the unfortunate celebrities who find themselves stuc…

Sometimes when people get into a religious sulk they do things like fly planes into buildings or dress their kids in white and drown them in bleach. So, in the grand scheme of wacko theological attention-seeking, when Don Julian was run out of the barrios…